Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

[Train Guy]

Anybody doing "longer" term investing (as opposed to daytrading) needs to learn how to do stock screens. I'm a daytrader so have only taken a mild passing interest and haven't learned the ins and outs of running screens. This one which turned up mostly boring unheard of stocks, is up 128% since 1/2000. Hey Larry, yeah you Dudash, this sort of thing should interest you. But instead of doing TA screens, it's doing FA screens and then determining which FA screens give the best results over time.

Growth for all seasons
01 Nov 2003

Here's a growth strategy that has worked well in both up and down markets.

Marc Gerstein
Director of investment research ReutersInvestor

Some Wall Street adages are generally valid. Others are questionable. Here's a good adage: growth strategies tend to work well in bull markets. Now, here's one that may not be quite as solid as many assume: growth strategies are dangerous in bear markets. Many who pursue this style do, indeed, get hit especially hard during lean times such as the past three years. But throughout this period, the ReutersSelect Relative Growth screen has flourished.

The key to this screen is the word "relative." It describes how we determine whether a particular growth rate is good enough to warrant our attention. For the most part, we compare growth trends to industry averages and to historic experience. Our goal is to find companies that have been better than peers and that have been improving over time. Here are the tests used in this screen:

Click on over, http://dai.multexinvestor.com/Article.aspx?docid=2821&target=screeningmarket&nd=1101_DAI_AAC.... to get all the details. It's got two tables comparing it's preformance to the S&P, +128% vs. -24% from 1/2000 - 10/2003, and three tables of current picks plus mini writeups on 5 of the picks.